Juan Antonio Villacañas

The earth is brief,
as brief as a man’s solemnity.
………
When you, Earth, stop palpitating in my flesh
I, flesh, will give you all my earth.

“The Earth and I”, from De-triumphant March (1960)

Death is a life of questions
that are being buried,
and one ends always
with doubt tangled in the lips.

“Epilogue”, from De-triumphant March (1960)

God borders my incredulity
constantly.
And my incredulity is so much God, that I am almost sure
to adore Him.

“Revolt of a Newborn”, from Revolt of a Newborn (1973)

I have an immensity which shivers in the oceans,
being, as I am, only a little fountain, small as an eye.

“Fountain”, from Revolt of a Newborn (1973)

I come to make song, after the tears.
And even if a choir of men
sprayed my tongue with silence,
poetry will come, with liberating voice,
to make my song fall from the trees
and reach the most deeply buried abysses of those tears
that the child lent me when crying himself into life.

Because my infant song
is stronger than man’s tears,
and it could even conquer me
robbing the need of tears from the sun and the wind.

"New Songs for After the Tears", from Revolt of a Newborn (1973)

If pain does not die
we shall make it poetry.

From Sublimation of Disobedience (1998)

Thought
is a flower from other worlds, a tale
that is torn in each written word.
……………

Whether Villacañas wrote in liras, free verse or whatever form, his poetry constantly springs from a profound search for transcendence and a concern from humanity that can make him to be at once social and spiritual. The vigour of his verses gives them quite often a muscular quality which appears equally in his most earthy poems of indictment or solidarity and in those in which he looks for God, suffers His silence or talks to Him.

But Juan Antonio Villacañas was more than a social poet, or a poet of the universe or a religious poet, or a poet of human themes, or a poet of love. Villacañas, apart from being a generous person, cordial, a poet in the deepest sense of the word, he is, above all, a poet of all times, a poet of yesterday, a poet of tomorrow. A poet who, in life, despite prizes and triumphs, did not get the recognition that other inferior poets had. Especially during his last years “critics” turned their back to him. But he remained faithful to that which was his passion. Poetry, a poetry that has the flow of a river, the serenity of an autumn day, the light that must be in the look of God.